By SHAYLA ESCUDERO/Lincoln Chronicle
Lincoln County is paying $325 a month for a small, away-from-the-courthouse office for a county commissioner who has no intention of using it.
Commissioner Casey Miller has been instructed not to use his courthouse office after allegations last September that he bullied employees and created a toxic work environment. An investigation later cleared Miller of the allegations but found he violated a personnel rule for disclosing confidential information about then-administrator Tim Johnson.
Despite his repeated requests to return, Miller is still not allowed to use his courthouse office and instead has been offered a small office four blocks north and separate from other elected officials, department heads and employees.
Miller was notified in May of the separate office but said he would not be using the space. Over a month later, he still has not picked up the keys, he told the Lincoln Chronicle last week.
The small office at 407 N. Coast Highway costs $325 a month for a total of $3,900 a year. The lease term began Feb. 1 and is on a month-to-month basis.
Miller said he would consider using a remote office if it was closer to constituents in different regions of the county, but felt if he used the Newport office it would not be a good precedent for resolving conflict among commissioners or their staff.
The Lincoln Chronicle asked the county’s public information officer in May about the cost and length of the lease of the office. Instead, the county counsel’s office said the Chronicle needed to file a formal records request.
The Chronicle’s May 19 public records request for the seven-page document took six weeks to fulfill and was supplied last week only after an appeal to District Attorney Jenna Wallace, the standard procedure for slow, ignored or denied requests under Oregon’s public records law.
“Lincoln County was required by law to either provide the requested documents or issue a written statement that the public body is still processing the request by June 2, 2025. This did not occur,” Wallace said in a letter to the county last Tuesday. “As of June 24, 2025, it appears the request is still outstanding.”
The records request was fulfilled the same day – a month after the county acknowledged that they had received Lincoln Chronicle’s request. Assistant county counsel Douglas Holbrook said they were not seeking to delay or avoid Oregon Public Records Law and that the staff member in charge of the record was not present at the time of the appeal.
- Shayla Escudero covers Lincoln County government, education, Newport, housing and social services for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at Shayla@LincolnChronicle.org
I disagree with Casey’s actions that got him into trouble in the first place, but I find it totally ridiculous that a duly elected official can be kept out of his office by others of the same or lesser rank. I’m not aware that the other two commissioners have voted to keep him out. And does the county counsel’s office have any authority to tell him where he must work, especially since the investigation said he did not bully employees?
I find the office rental particularly amusing because the ramp shown in the photo leads directly to the front door of my gastroenterologist’s office. I assume Miller’s unused rented office must be upstairs.
I lived in major metropolitan areas my entire life until I moved to Yachats. I found the small town politics amusing and entertaining. No longer. The kind of shenanigans at the county and city level are not funny but destructive. In Yachats, from the leasing of trees outside the city limits to the city approving an Army barracks to be erected in the middle of the “Gem of the Oregon Coast” have really soured me on local politics.
Micheal, please explain what you are referring to when you state that Yachats has approved an “Army barracks”. This is news to me.
East Ninth Street and Highway 101. Across the street from the also city-approved Dollar General.
This kind of infighting among duly elected and unelected County officials and employees leaves a bad taste in my mouth. What gives the Country Chair and the County counsel authority to punish another elected official indefinitely for a minor infraction? IMO you all need to get over yourselves and do the job you were elected to do. Stop acting like petulant children.
I am disappointed that this news outlet is giving us “re-runs” as “news.” This story has a long history, which involved many players and layers of government. Obviously, the very serious issues of employees at the Commissioners Office feeling “harassed” by this man have not just “disappeared”. So, even though an outside investigation did not find merit in the legal sense of “harassment”, my guess is that the traumatic memory of those who felt harassed has not been resolved. And continuing to put this man’s story out there like he is a misunderstood victim is not serving the truth.
It’s a shame the county refused or forgot for six whole weeks to provide the information Lincoln Chronicle requested. Perhaps if county leadership had acted quicker or more willingly to ensure that the records custodian provided it, the information would’ve simply appeared in earlier reporting about our elected commissioner’s office situation. But now, the delay to fulfill the public records request makes it look like the county is withholding of information may be an important part of this news story. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t; another report is now needed to explore that question.
Just an idea: if Commissioner Miller isn’t going to use the office, what about making that rented space at the gastroenterologist’s office (per a previous comment above) the county staff’s office? And allowing Miller back into the room that the public provides and designates for commissioners? That way the added monthly expense might feel more justified to the public, and give some “resolution” to this story.